No one will ever accuse Dave Rizzardo, associate director of the Maryland World Class Consortia of being shy or dispassionate about lean manufacturing and operational excellence. But, on a panel discussion at IndustryWeek's recent Operations Leadership Summit, the audience got an earful from the operations expert on treating people right, listening to your employees and how it's the leader's job to make sure everyone else can do their work. 

Joining Dave for this particularly lively panel discussion was his friend (well, they were friends at the start of the conversation) Carl Livesay, general manager of Maryland-based Mercury Plastics. Also speaking was Sarah Tilkens, CEO of the KPI Lab and senior manager for operational excellence at GE Healthcare. The moderator is Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief at IndustryWeek.